Supporting role of ontology in a simulation system for countermeasure evaluation

Abstract

Military aircraft in the battlefield are under constant threat from missile attacks. Technology such as infra-red countermeasures are used to protect against these threats. Measurements, modelling and simulation are used by the military to develop, implement and evaluate these countermeasures. The ability to simulate what happens in real life scenarios is a powerful way to evaluate countermeasures. These simulation systems are complex and lack a common vocabulary. Ontology is an emerging discipline providing a mechanism to provide common domain vocabularies. Ontologies in information systems and engineering is maturing after years of use and the research described in this paper investigates the possible advantages that ontology might have in the simulation environment. We also investigated how ontologies can provide a solution to some of the challenges to be dealt with in a countermeasure simulation system. The construction of an initial ontology showed that the ontology not only provides a high-level description of the concepts in the simulation system, but it also supports the validation of the use of the simulation models in the system